Does this spec sound right for the money? Buying it on 27th if so!

SilverPenguin · 26 Dec 2006 at 12:36

Hi everyone, I've been a member here for a while now buts its been a long time since I posted anything.

I'm about to upgrade my 4 year old Dell with a custom made pc. I had planned on a 24" iMac but a friend has just built is own pc thats much faster than the Mac I was looking at and was about £600 cheaper, so I've got to go the pc route again as I want as much performacefor my money as I can get right now.

Basically this pc will be used mostly for photoshop as I do a lot of photography and am about to buy a Nkon D2X which produces 18mb or so RAW files.

Now my friend has just built the following spec pc for just shy of £700:

Intel 2.4 C2D
ASUS P5B Deluxe 775
2 x Corsair value 1GB DDR2 667
Asus GeForce 7600 GS 512mb gfx card (silent series)
Maxtor 320gb SATA2 Hard Drive
Silent hard drive cooler (big heat sink that sits over the hard drive)
Sony DVD writer
and a case to put it all in.

Now I have had a play with his pc and it is very very fast. It will open up a D2X raw file in CS2 in about 3-4 seconds (including booting CS2!) which is way better than my long in the tooth P4 that takes about 20 seconds to open a smaller D200 file.
So I know I like the performace this system offers, but I'm just wondering if there are any improvements that can be made but keeping under that £700 figure? I just want to make sure I am getting the most performace I can for the money.

With the gfx card for example I see there is a 7600GT version with only 256MB that is slightly more expensive, would that be better than the GS series with 512? Its all a bit of a mine field to me as I haven't been in to the computer upgrading thing for years!! The system will be hooked up to a Dell 24" monitor.

Ulitmate requirements are:

1) Photoshop speed, must be fast with large files as I can sometimes be looking through up to 500+ shots after being out for the day with the camera. I will be upscaling images to 5000+ pixel TIFFS (50mb+) sometimes.

2) Little noise, I don't want somthing with tons of fans making loads of noise. The system above is very quiet which is another factor I like about it.

3) £700 tops.

I'm all but set to buy tomorrow so any advice would be greatly appreciated, even if its just to say the above system is a good choice.

Thanks everyone

Lolcb · 26 Dec 2006 at 12:48

This had nothing to do with your spec thread. Just went to your website and if those are the pics you took, well they sure do look good

Would make lovely wallpapers for desktop lol.

SilverPenguin · 26 Dec 2006 at 12:57

lol, thanks. Yes they are mine and yes they look lovely on my desktop

SilverPenguin · 26 Dec 2006 at 15:59

Any other ideas yet my good people?

gamesaregood · 26 Dec 2006 at 16:06

Hello mate,

I was wondering it you had considered a Raptor Hard Drive, does using these RAW images take much from the disk?

Michael

SilverPenguin · 26 Dec 2006 at 16:12

Does a raptor drive have a faster RPM? I looked briefly at a 10,000 rpm drive the other day but it was £150 for only 150gb and I need more space than that

gamesaregood · 26 Dec 2006 at 16:15

Hello mate,

Yes the have 10,000rpm and 16mb cache making access times a lot lower, is this important for RAW images? But yes I'm afraid they are expenisve, you could always have a smaller raptor for windows and while editing photos etc and a larger drive for storage maybe?

Just something to consider....

Michael

SilverPenguin · 26 Dec 2006 at 16:17

Ah right ok, thanks for that. Read/write times for RAW files seems to be pretty good on the 7,200rpm maxtor drive so until I have extra funds I'll probably have to leave the raptor drive for now. Although in the future having all my programmes on that and files on a seperate drive would be something I'd like to do

SilverPenguin · 26 Dec 2006 at 21:30

Any other last minute advice before I go buy this spec tomorrow? Guessing its about right for the money as nobody has said otherwise but still curious about the gfx card and the whole 7600 GS 512mb vs the GT with 256.

Supercow · 26 Dec 2006 at 21:34

I can't personally fault that system for what you will be using it for

Dark_Angel · 26 Dec 2006 at 22:37

Since you are just getting the 7600GS, why not get 256MB instead of 512? only the higher end cards actually require the extra RAM for when they output at silly high resolutions. It doesnt sound like you want to game anyway, so if you can save a few bucks, go for it. (usually rhe ram is faster/tighter timings on the 256MB version too).

SilverPenguin · 26 Dec 2006 at 22:59

Dark_Angel said:
Since you are just getting the 7600GS, why not get 256MB instead of 512? only the higher end cards actually require the extra RAM for when they output at silly high resolutions. It doesnt sound like you want to game anyway, so if you can save a few bucks, go for it. (usually rhe ram is faster/tighter timings on the 256MB version too).

So you mean get the higher memory but cheaper GS? Sorry slightly ocnfused by your wording, sounds like your suggesting the GS at the top but the GT by the end? lol - sorry I'm getting tired so easily confused!